Design parameter space for a High Pressure Optimized Dense Plasma Focus operating with Deuterium

TL;DR

This paper explores the design parameters for a high-pressure optimized dense plasma focus device using a revised model, aiming to enhance its potential for industrial nuclear applications like neutron generation and isotope production.

Contribution

It introduces a new design parameter space for HPO-DPF based on an updated RGV model, facilitating practical system scaling and performance prediction.

Findings

Identified feasible system parameters for HPO-DPF operation.

Predicted neutron yields using waveform fitting with the Lee model.

Provided a scalable framework for high-pressure DPF design.

Abstract

The potential of the Dense Plasma Focus (DPF) for industrial applications in many fields is well recognized, although yet to be realized in practice. Particularly attractive is the possibility of its use as inexpensive industrial source of nuclear reactions for diverse high value applications such as fast pulsed neutron radiography of hydrogenous materials, non-intrusive neutron interrogation of concealed organic contraband and rapid production of short lived radioisotopes for medical diagnostics and therapy. Recently, it has been suggested that it may be possible to operate the DPF efficiently in a High-Pressure-Optimized (HPO) mode. This paper explores the design parameter space for such HPO-DPF based on the revised Resistive Gratton-Vargas (RGV) model with a view to identify a practicable set of system parameters and their scaling. The current waveform predicted by the revised RGV model for the chosen set of parameters is fitted to the Lee model to estimate the likely neutron yield.